Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire

Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire. John Cosin* (1595-1672). This is probably the best known of the many English translations of the medieval Latin hymn ‘Veni creator spiritus’*. It was first printed in Cosin’s A Collection of Private Devotions in the Practice of the Ancient Church (1627), where it was assigned to the Third Hour, at which the Holy Ghost was traditionally thought to have descended at Pentecost. It may have been written for the coronation of King Charles I in 1625, at which Cosin was Master of Ceremonies: it appears as an appendix to the king’s own manuscript copy of the service. It was later incorporated into the Ordination Service in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (Cosin...